


Bender

by Enigel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e17 99 Problems, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-01
Updated: 2010-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enigel/pseuds/Enigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel's "bender" makes a small ripple within the hunter community.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bender

**Author's Note:**

> This started out funny but, because this is Supernatural, turned more serious towards the end.
> 
> Unbeta-ed, so please let me know if I got anything wrong, especially the Americana. Google can only do so much.

"Hey, check this out, Ma!"

"Hm?" Laura replied distractedly.

"Mysterious Robbing of a Liquor Store! It's from a local leaf in El Paso County. San Benito, TX. When Juan Sanchez, 32, entered his liquor store on Monday, there was no sign that anything unusual awaited him, no sign of the greatest surprise of his life. He unlocked the door as he did every Monday..."

"Skip the journo talk, kid, get to the point."

"Aw, you know I wanted to be a journalist, mom. Before..." he trailed off.

"Yeah, Jimmy. I know," she replied quietly. "But come on, what would you rather be, the clueless guy who gets to report of the spooks, or the guy who kicks their ass?"

He smiled a little.

"Well, if you put it like that... Although it's you who does the ass-kicking, while I'm just burning bones or salting things."

"One day, kid, one day," she made a sweeping gesture around the room, encompassing the arsenal on the motel table, the bags and the shotguns, "all this could be yours."

He snorted, but his mood had improved, she could tell.

"Yeah, as if anyone else would want them. Anyway, if I could get back to my _case_..."

"... and the _summary_ of it which you were going to present..."

He rolled his eyes and went on.

"This guy comes in, no sign of break-in, and the door is still locked, and all the bottles in the store are empty. Not stolen, empty."

"Hm. I feel silly even for suggesting this, but: any local teetotaler's advocacy groups?"

"Right," he snorted. "This is Texas, remember? Anyway, whatever you think about his skills, the journo in cause had explored that angle, and no, nothing like that. Besides, when you want to send a message, you do something more dramatic, break a window, paint a graffiti, something."

Laura nodded, approving of his thinking. He might not get normal schooling, but she made damn sure he was using that brain of his.

"College prank? Business war? Drain the bottles of the competition, take their customers?"

"The thing is, there was no trace of liquor in the sink or the drainage."

"I still don't see why this would be one of ours."

"Because..." he smirked knowingly, and she knew he must have left the best for last. He was really proud when he was the one to come up with a case from the salad of newspapers they collected. "Apart from the locked door - why would a thief with a key lock it back? there's the surveillance video. It runs smoothly up to 3:17 am, then it's interrupted what looks like a burst of static. Completely unusable for 47 minutes, then bam - it's back, and everything looks the same, except for the empty bottles. Bottles strewn everywhere, lots of them actually on the shelves - there's a photo, look," he said, pushing the page towards her.

The store looked like the aftermath of a frat party - without the condom wrappers and cigarette butts, or the junk food wrappers. Well, apart from the bottles it was not much like a frat dorm at all, in fact, and she frowned. The open-mouthed face of Mr Sanchez looked at her from the grainy black-and-white frame.

"Forty-seven minutes," Jim repeated, grinning hopefully. "What do you think?"

"Could be. What kind of spook would do something like this, though?"

"I don't know, you're the weirdopedia here. I'm just the brawny sidekick."

"I'll kick your sides if you call me that again, kid," she scoffed, unable to stop her smile.

Jim was reading again.

"And look, they say the owner might have trouble getting his insurance money, because the insurance company spotted the same things we did, and they're saying he's not insured against, wait for it, acts of God."

"What?" she snorted.

"Yeah, they say that no human could have done this, because of _all the odd details I've just mentioned_," he emphasized, puffing up his chest, "and so it must have been an act of God."

"Right, 'cause if God still cared about this world, which I'm pretty sure He doesn't, He'd send an angel down to smite a liquor store."

"Pah," Jim added. "Smiting would imply something impressive, at least a lightning storm or a tornado. This looks, well, like you said, mom, a prank."

She thought for a moment, leafing through the mental pages of all the creepy-crawlies, spooks and other oddities.

"Jimmy, you're brilliant!" she said.

"I know," he replied, pretending to be all calm and confidence, then dropped the mask for honest curiosity. "Why?"

"You know what this makes me think of? Tricksters. The essential pranksters of the spooky world. These things always claim to give people 'their just desserts'. Owner must have refused to serve him free booze or something."

"So?" Jim asked.

"Did anybody die?"

"Like, in weird circumstances? Nothing in here."

"Then we keep an eye on the town, just in case it ramps up, but we've got bigger fish to fry."

She hated to refuse one of "his" cases, but the paper she was holding had signs of a much more serious nature. She gave him the paper so he could read for himself.

"Seems like a there's a shapeshifter loose in Nebraska."

Jim's face turned grim and serious, too much so for his age. She hated that she'd had to be the one to raise her son into this, but ever since the shapeshifter had killed Dale... Ridding the world of as many skinjobs as they could, and of other monsters while they were at it, was the only form of therapy available to people like them. So that other people could be normal.

"Let's get the piece of trash," Jim gritted out, and although her heart was breaking a little more every time, it was also filling with pride in her brave son.


End file.
